Monday, 11 July 2016

Announcement: Canadian Freedom of Association Award

Announcement: Canadian Freedom of Association
Award

My
friend and colleague, Roy J. Adams, recent endowed a new a new award, the
Canadian Freedom of Association Award.Roy is the author of the guest blog on February 25, 2015: “Full Freedom
of Association Wins Charter Protection.” http://rhodahassmann.blogspot.ca/2015_02_01_archive.html.Roy is a stalwart and strong promoter of the
rights of trade unions; see particularly, below, his discussion of how Canada and
most other countries fail to promote collective bargaining, as all members of
the International Labour Organization are required to do.

Roy J. Adams

“The
Canadian Industrial Relations Association Announces a new Canadian Freedom of
Association Award

Enabled
by a start-up gift of $20,000 from Roy J. Adams, the Canadian Industrial
Relations Association has established a Canadian Freedom of Association Award.
It will be presented annually to a person or organization “that has made an
outstanding contribution to promoting understanding of and compliance with
international standards regarding the right to organize and bargain
collectively as those standards apply to Canada.” Among the practices that the
award is intended to encourage are “efforts or initiatives that establish or
expand upon the right of all workers to form and join unions of their own
choosing without prior authorization, that expand the guarantees for the free
functioning of worker and employer organizations without interference by public
authorities; and to respect, to promote and to realize in good faith the rights
of workers and employers to collective bargaining in accord with internationally
recognized human rights standards, and, in particular those principles and
standards developed and promoted by the International Labour Organization.”

In
his talk announcing the award, Roy Adams further elaborated on some of the
issues that the award is intended to illuminate and the practices it is
intended to encourage. Here is the text of his remarks made to those attending
the CIRA Annual Meeting in Saskatoon on May 31, 2016.

The
Canadian Freedom of Association Award: Why and For Whom?

Although
I had been researching and teaching international and comparative industrial
relations for many years, I first began to pay serious attention to labour
rights as human rights in the early 1990s when McMaster introduced its Theme
School on International Justice and Human Rights and I was asked to develop the
international labour rights course. What I came to realize more clearly than I
had before is that, although we have pledged to respect international human
rights law, in many ways Canadian law, custom and practice is out of sync with
international law.

Collective
bargaining is a fundamental human right, recognized as such by relevant
international organizations and most nations of the world but we do not honour
it as a human right.

Employers,
for example, who would not consider discouraging women from applying for jobs
historically held by men, regularly make it known that they will do whatever
the law permits to discourage their employees from forming the unions necessary
to engage in collective bargaining.

Canada
is a member of the International Labour Organization and all members of the ILO
have a constitutional responsibility to “promote” collective bargaining but our
governments don’t do that. “Promote” means “to encourage to exist or flourish”
but our governments do not encourage employees to form unions and bargain
collectively. Instead they remain neutral thereby granting legitimacy to the
absence of collective bargaining and to the efforts of employers to avoid the
process.

Viable,
independent unions have a right to negotiate collective agreements and to
organize work stoppages in support of their proposals but if they are unable to
meet the stringent requirements for becoming “exclusive agent” for all
employees in some government recognized bargaining unit, they get no government
support. Rather than easy, as international standards say it should be, the
road to union representation and a jointly regulated workplace is rocky,
dangerous and difficult.

Independent
unions have no effective, protected right to strike and although it is clearly
contrary to international law, even government certified unions on legal strike
have regularly had their strike rights illicitly abrogated by the threat or
practice of back to work orders.

And,
let me provide one final way that our practices offend international human
rights law: advice on how to avoid unions and collective bargaining is
regularly on display at management conferences and in the classrooms of
Canada’s business schools. University and college teachers do not commonly
advocate practices that are clearly illegal, such as firing union activists,
but they do teach potential human resource management executives how unions and
collective bargaining may be rendered “unnecessary” much as Machiavellian
advisors counseled their dictatorial “princes” on the ways to make democracy
unnecessary.

This
award is intended to encourage those who would expose and oppose these
practices.

It
might go to a civil society organization that went to extraordinary efforts to
increase consciousness of the duty of governments to promote collective
bargaining. Better yet, it might go to a political party that made collective
bargaining promotion part of its electoral platform. Or still better yet, it
might go to a sitting government that put a plan in place to increase
collective bargaining coverage, where it is lagging, to over 50, or 60 or 70%.

It
might go also to an employer whoscrupulously respected international standards by, for example, publicly
announcing to his/her employees the firm’s willingness to enter into good faith
negotiations leading to a collective agreementwith any independent, democratic union with sufficient resources to
effectively represent employee interests on a daily basis.

It
might go to a union that made active efforts to help workers exercise their
right to organize in any format with which they feel comfortable so long as it
is not illegal and conforms to international human rights law.

It
might go to any organization or government deemed to rigorously respect worker
strike rights especially in situations when doing so requires political
courage.

It
might also go to a University Business School that pledged to teach human
resource management as practiced in unionized firms on the basis that all firms
of any size would be unionized were the enterprise to rigorously respect
international human rights law.

And,
of course, the award might go to individuals – professors, union leaders,
corporate executives, citizens-at large – who made extraordinary efforts to
bring about a Canadian industrial relations system consistent with
international law.

I’ve
not mentioned constitutional law because it must be seen at this point to be,
by default, virtually synonymous with international law. In its recent
jurisprudence, the Supreme Court of Canada has, to a very large degree, handed
down decisions consistent with international law.

I
am sure that the committee of the Canadian Industrial Relations Association
will be able to identify many more efforts worthy of this award. If over time
the award is able to raise consciousness of the disconnect between our current
practices and what our practices ought to be, its establishment will be a
success.”

About Me

Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann is Canada Research Chair in International Human Rights, holding a joint appointment in the Department of Global Studies and the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2006 the Human Rights section of the American Political Science Association named Dr. Howard-Hassmann its first Distinguished Scholar of Human Rights.Since arriving at Laurier in 2003 she has published Compassionate Canadians: Civic Leaders Discuss Human Rights (2003), Reparations to Africa (2008) and Can Globalization Promote Human Rights? (2010), and has also co-edited Economic Rights in Canada and the United States (2006) and The Age of Apology (2008). She established and maintains a website on political apologies, which can be visited at political-apologies.wlu.ca.